Melissa Pinion-Whitt

Reporter

Recent articles

Animal cruelty

CHINO HILLS -- Prosecutors this week charged a Chino Hills man with animal cruelty after two children allegedly caught him on video beating a Cocker Spaniel with a stick for 10 minutes.Qihui Zhai, 21, was charged Wednesday with one count of felony animal cruelty and is scheduled to be arraigned June 30 in Rancho Cucamonga Superior Court, said Chris Lee, District Attorney’s Office spokesman.Inland Valley Humane Society...

Strikes

A strike that would have shut down Kaiser Permanente pharmacies statewide today was postponed as hospital officials and union representatives negotiated.Some 1,430 pharmacists working for Kaiser facilities across Southern California planned to strike if a deal wasn’t reached, said Robin Borden, president of the Guild for Professional Pharmacists. Instead, talks continued on through Sunday night. Kaiser Permanente announced Monday that all pharmacies in Southern...

Homicide

POMONA >> A Pomona man shot and killed his live-in girlfriend, her brother and mother late Thursday before turning the gun on himself, police said Friday.Police said the 28-year-old man grabbed a handgun after getting into a dispute with his girlfriend.“Basically, he went from room to room and killed everyone,” said Pomona police Lt. Mike Keltner.Police received a call at 10:52 p.m. Thursday from a relative of the alleged shooter.“The...

Wildfires

RANCHO CUCAMONGA >> Aided by water-dropping helicopters, firefighters continued to battle the Etiwanda Fire on Friday, which officials said they have more accurately measured at 2,190 acres — up from a 1,627 acre estimate on Thursday.Gentler, shifting winds allowed aircraft to support ground crews and better map the destruction, while altering the blazes path away from homes to the south and toward steep mountainous terrain in the foothills of the San Gabriel...

Automotive accidents

Shaun Jarvis was on his way Thursday morning to have his city-issued police helmet repaired. It was his day off and he was riding his Harley-Davidson west on the 91 Freeway.Hours later, his brothers and sisters at the San Bernardino Police Department were mourning the loss of a man — the father, the officer — just 30 years old, who in March posted on his Facebook page that he’d passed motorcycle training school. Jarvis of Beaumont died after a car veered...

Wildfires

FONTANA >> What started out as practice turned into the real deal for dozens of jail inmates training for fire season on the north end of the city.Cal Fire was conducting fire training for 80 inmates on Wednesday morning. But that changed when the Etiwanda Fire ignited.“It was a best-case scenario that we were prepared with extra staffing,” said Cal Fire spokeswoman Debbie Chapman. “And we were training in an area that was close proximity, so we were...

Redlands

REDLANDS >> When a meter reader arrived at Cathy Rodriguez’s home Thursday morning, she asked the man to wait outside the gate until she brought her three Yorkshire terriers inside her home.But according to Rodriguez, the Southern California Gas Company employee didn’t wait, and that’s when things went wrong.“The next thing she knew, the meter reader was inside the property and the dogs circled around behind him,” said Frank Padilla,...

Automotive accidents

CHICO — Arthur Arzola had a passion for helping low-income children get into college, making some of them the first in their families to do so.That’s the mission the 26-year-old Rancho Cucamonga man was on Thursday while riding with high school students to Humboldt State University. But the University of La Verne graduate student and nine other people were killed in a fiery crash before making it to the campus for the university’s Spring Preview for prospective...

Automotive accidents

LOS ANGELES — Nine students from a Los Angeles charter school district were on the bus trip to Humboldt State University on Thursday at the time of the crash, and two suffered injuries.Officials at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a charter management organization that includes 15 high schools and seven middle schools, said the other seven students were on a separate bus that wasn’t involved in the crash.The two girls who were involved received bruises and...